Michael Pelehach, 80

Grumman executive called father of F-14 jet

Michael Pelehach, a Grumman Corp. executive considered the father of the F-14 fighter jet, died Monday in Huntington, N.Y., after suffering a stroke. He was 80.

At the Paris Air Show in the late 1960s, Mr. Pelehach spotted a Russian MiG-21 fighter jet, then the envy of air forces around the world because of its speed, maneuverability and firepower.

The United States needed a fighter to defeat the MiG.

Mr. Pelehach politely asked the Russians if he could inspect the MiG, and then walked off its measurements. When he returned to Grumman's Bethpage, N.Y., headquarters, he designed a model of the MiG-21 that was tested in a wind tunnel.

That early work was later used to develop what became Grumman's most successful aircraft--the F-14 Tomcat, still the Navy's premier interceptor and an answer to the MiG.

"He spearheaded the whole working relationship between the U.S. Navy and Grumman and the major subcontractors," said Mike Ciminera, a retired Grumman executive who was Mr. Pelehach's assistant. "Inside the company, he was the design genius who brought together all the options" that made up the F-14.

Grumman was Long Island's largest company for decades until it was taken over in 1994 by Northrop Corp. of Los Angeles.

Mr. Pelehach, who joined Grumman in 1950 as a structural engineer after graduating from the Academy of Aeronautics in New York, was rarely without a pencil to sketch designs or a slide rule, which he kept on his desk decades after the device gave way to electronic calculators. He had a pencil at the ready on a trip to China in the 1980s, recalled John Bierwirth, former Grumman chairman who accompanied Mr. Pelehach there.

"He was asked by the Chinese if it would be possible to modernize one of the older airplanes the Russians had given them," Bierwirth said. "Mike took a look at the aircraft and drew a design on a tablecloth. The Chinese engineers gathered around to watch him and, at the end of the evening, they asked him if it would be all right to keep the tablecloth."

Mr. Pelehach directed Grumman's programs to build the Army's Mohawk aircraft and, later, the F-14. He was named an executive vice president in 1979 and the following year became president of Grumman International, the company's overseas sales unit. He retired in 1986.